Your Week Ahead: Sept. 4 to 10

BumbleFest buzzes with 34 bands in West Palm Beach, NSU Art Museum hosts a 60-year retrospective, and MC5’s Wayne Kramer is still kicking out the jams. Plus, ArtsLaunch at the Arsht, an American Songbook Radio Hour, a same-sex dramedy and more in your week ahead.

WEDNESDAY

Few bands can genuinely be said to have revolutionized rock music, but Detroit’s MC5 meet this lofty standard. Led in part by charismatic singer-guitarist Wayne Kramer, the group’s 1969 debut album Kick Out the Jams was a raw, cacophonous furnace-blast of rock ‘n’ roll whose sheer loudness and balls-to-the-wall intensity left then-upstarts Led Zeppelin in its dust. Widely credited with bridging the gap between garage rock and punk rock, MC5 burned out almost as quickly as it formed, releasing three albums and eventually losing all but one of its founding members to death and time. Now only Kramer remains, but he’s celebrating the 50th anniversary of Kick Out the Jams with a star-studded collective of hard-rock acolytes—veteran musicians from Fugazi, Soundgarden, Faith No More and Zen Guerrilla.

FRIDAY

Winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s latest Grand Jury Prize, this buzz-worthy fall release is set in the less-enlightened year of 1993. It centers on Chloe Grace Moretz’s title character, who, when found necking with another girl in the backseat of a car on prom night, is promptly shuttled to a Christian conversion therapy center. Despite being subjected to “de-gaying” methods and dogmatic rhetoric aimed at breaking down her identity, Cameron Post manages to find community and understanding among her fellow “inmates” in their same-sex prison. The movie speaks to the fluidity of sexual orientation—and the rejection of labels such as “homosexual” for more inclusive classifications—which would ascend to mainstream acceptability in the aughts. “The Miseducation of Cameraon Post,” which finds both humor and melancholy in a dreadful milieu, runs through next Thursday.

SATURDAY

Thinking of adopting your first pet, or considering adding another four-legged lovebug to your family? There’s no better time or place to select your next best friend than at the fifth-annual Countdown 2 Zero, the area’s largest annual adoption event, organized by Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League and Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control. The event promises an embarrassment of adorable riches, with close to 1,000 dogs, cats, puppies, kittens and rabbits awaiting their forever homes, courtesy of more than 20 local animal rescue organizations. Last year, 273 animals went home with new families, so that’s the number to beat on Saturday. The bustling event also features vendor booths offering the best in animal care, health and comfort.

Our region’s premier ambassadors for the Great American Songbook, uber-talented pianist Rich Switzer and his superstar vocalist wife Jill divide their time between performing the greatest songs of the Big Band/crooner era and playing them on the radio, as the morning show hosts of Legends 100.3-FM. The duo’s latest show, “The Radio Hour,” will pay homage to the classic variety show format, and will feature an eclectic selection of songs in a loose, convivial program. Powerhouse vocalist Avery Sommers will join the duo onstage, along with emerging performer Chris Santiago, winner of the 2018/2019 Young Artist Award from the Society for the Preservation of the Great American Songbook.

This annual festival toasts the seventh anniversary of local music zine PureHoney, and founder Steven Rullman describes it as “by far the most ambitious festival I’ve ever put together in my life.” Thirty-four bands will cram six stages in downtown West Palm Beach, offering musical bliss for everyone. Florida bands dominate the lineup, but the touring headliners alone make this event the bargain of a lifetime: Oakland, California’s Lumerians are the best psychedelic rock band you haven’t heard, with swirling atmospherics and trance-like instrumentals marrying Spacemen 3 and Tangerine Dream; Los Angeles’ Santoros play dreamy, surf-tinged psych-rock groove-a-thons that sound like dispatches from the mid-‘60s garage scene; and Seattle’s Scott Yoder is a described in Pure Honey as a “21st century version of Marc Bolan,” all glam and glitter, conjuring the peak years of Donovan and Nick Drake. I don’t know how Rullman discovers these eclectic breakout acts, but we continue to thank him for expanding our ears! Visit here for the complete lineup.

Last year, Hurricane Irma forced the cancellation of the Arsht Center’s annual season-opening shindig, so celebrate a little bit extra at this year’s gathering, in which more than 100 arts and cultural organizations will discuss their programming, with many staging special performances and workshops exclusive to ArtsLaunch. Among the highlights: Miami City Ballet will host a “Ballet 101” workshop; rapper Jaime Knight will perform samples from a hip-hop musical that will play the Arsht in January; there will be lessons in flamenco, hip-hop and salsa dance styles; and Zoetic Stage and City Theatre will host staged play readings. Plus, stick around for foodie events, choir and string performances, and a party on Thomson Plaza featuring performances from reggae rockers Jahfe and Grammy-nominated Latin funk band Locos Por Juana. Everything’s free, but bring your credit card: ArtsLaunch offers a rare opportunity to purchase individual tickets without the usual ticket handling fees.

SUNDAY

For the past 60 years, this Fort Lauderdale cultural institution has been at the forefront of paradigm-shifting art movements, from traditional African sculpture to abstract expressionism, Pop Art and video art, acquiring and exhibiting masterpieces from each. In honor of its sixth decade, NSU Art Museum will present the visual-art equivalent of a greatest-hits compilation, offering tapas from its diverse collection, sprawled across more than 28,000 square feet of gallery space. Named after one of its most recent acquisitions—Jenny Holzer’s conceptual piece “Remember to React,” which urges spectators’ active engagement with art—the exhibit’s masterpieces run the gamut from Frida Kahlo to Purvis Young, Andy Warhol to Julian Schnabel. The exhibition runs all the way through next June.